The rivets in the walls were as wide as manhole covers and would have taken a week to saw through with a diamond cutter before you realized the walls were triple reinforced. The towers on either side of the gate were made of solid granite and rose 14 thousand feet into the air where storms gathered at their peaks. They seemed to have existed independently, and been masterfully incorporated into the structure of the city.
Above the single entry, printed in the boldest sans serif you have ever seen, was a message: NOW ENTERING STRONG CITY. And then, in a more flowery script, Make yourself at home.
Isaiah 26:1-5
Sam Storms has been on my radar for awhile, as a guy with strong loyalties to the Bible, Jonathan Edwards, and Calvinistic theology. Storms is a prolific writer and a fan of John Piper, which in my book, is also in his favor–oh yeah, and he’s local to Kansas City too, so I could hypothetically run into him in a coffee shop. All that said, The Hope of Glory is the first Storms volume I’ve read. It’s a series of 100 “daily meditations” on Colossians, and it didn’t disappoint.
Here are the three primary reasons I’ve already bought and given away multiple copies of this book:
- It’s devotional. In other words, it was good for my soul. Sam Storms writes in a worshipful way that pushes my thoughts toward Jesus, not just theological understanding. These really are “meditations.”
- It’s instructive. The Hope of Glory was one source I drew from when I preached a short series of sermons on Colossians, and Storms’ blow-by-blow approach to each verse (or phrase, in some cases) doesn’t fail to enlighten. At the same time, he stays grounded in the wider context of each passage and Colossians as a whole. So in this sense the book is a commentary.
- It’s short. More accurately, the chapters are short. The book covers the whole book of Colossians in about 350 pages, but you can read a chapter in 5-10 minutes.
Overall, I highly recommend The Hope of Glory as a study resource and for devotional reading.
I just stumbled across KupOfJoe.com, a list of KC’s coffee places with comments, maps, and links. Not bad. This is in addition to KC Perky, a regularly updated coffee blog with more detailed reviews, but fewer places listed. In an hour I’ll be checking out Rev! Cafe & Gallery for the first time…which is a Christian place, The Pitch tells us. Who knew it?
One of my favorite metaphors for Christian spirituality is the race. These verses reveal that we should run with gutsy, audacious, self-denial–and with trusting, child-like, dependence. We should move as fast as we can, while realizing that the fact that we can remain on our feet is entirely in the hands of Another.
1 Corinthians 9:23-24:
I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.
Psalm 37:23-24:
The steps of a man are established by the LORD,
when he delights in his way;
though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong,
for the LORD upholds his hand.
This comes from N.T. Wright’s Acts for Everyone Part One, but it reads like a paragraph out of a novel. A historically-true, gospel-centered, heart-thumping novel that reflects the kind of “education” a seminary grad can only pray for and aspire to.
Peter and John had a secret–a secret that enabled them to run rings round the book-learning of the authorities. They had been with Jesus. They had been with him night and day. They had seen and heard him pray. They knew how he read the scriptures, in his fresh, creative way, drawing out their inner message and finding his own vocation in the middle of it.
Now that he had died and had then been astonishingly raised, and had then been exalted into the heavenly realm, all Peter and John had to do to explain what they were about was to develop the lines of thought they had heard him use over and over again.
This didn’t just give them “boldness” in the sense of courage to stand up and say what they thought. Sometimes people can be bold even when they’re muddled. It gave them something more: a clarity, a sharp edge, a definite point at which to stand. And the authorities knew it.
